Learning to Love Yourself by Becoming Someone Else

“We’re all born naked, the rest is drag.” – Rupaul
I am a drag king, meaning I was assigned female at birth and take on a male persona in my performance. In addition to being fun and making me money, becoming another character for a night helps me to better appreciate being myself.
I first started performing as a drag king while I was a student at Oberlin College. Each year, the campus hosted a legendary drag ball (so massive it was once covered by MTV-!) where you could compete for cash prizes, so as a lifelong lover of attention and player of dress-up, I was in! At the time, I identified as a femme and presented that way, meaning no one on the street speculated about the many possibilities of my gender the way they do now. I therefore saw passing as a man as a challenge that intrigued me. I created a character I called “Nevada”- a fabulously flamboyant man based on one of my friends at Oberlin who was also named after a state. That first year, I felt amazing strutting down the runway and won second place in the king category, which left me feeling encouraged to keep exploring this type of performance. I took a queer studies class and wrote my final research paper about drag kings- I wanted to delve into this art form and find out all I could. I loved that it challenged the status quo, and was a fusion of dance, theater and social/cultural commentary. Throughout college, graduation and my subsequent moves to Maine and now New York, I kept performing. I also start...

Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - October 1, 2018 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs